To Whom God's Love Commits Me Here
by Evenmoor
Summary: Lt. Patrick Bonanno of the Massachusetts State Police has an out-of-body experience after being severely wounded in a shoot-out. One-shot.


**Title**: To Whom God's Love Commits Me Here

**Genre**: Hurt/Comfort, Supernatural

**Rating**: K

**Characters**: Patrick Bonanno, Castiel

**Setting**: During "The Three Strikes Job" (2.14) for _Leverage_, between "My Bloody Valentine" (5.14) and "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" (5.15) for _Supernatural_

**A/N**: I have always liked Detective Bonanno, and I look forward to every episode he pops up in. And Castiel... I'm sure he'll be back, eventually.

* * *

><p>Lt. Patrick Bonanno of the Massachusetts State Police sat glumly in his hospital room, staring down at his own unconscious form in the bed. No one seemed to see him at all – he'd tried screaming, waving his hands, <em>anything<em> to get someone to notice him. He had to let someone know what had happened to him, who it was that filled him full of lead. Unfortunately, nothing he did did anything. He could touch things, it seemed, but couldn't move them, not even a piece of paper. Not even Wendy felt him.

There were several possibilities he'd come up with, none of which he liked: first, that he had finally lost his marbles; second, that this was all some sort of bizarre dream; third, that this was an actual out-of-body experience.

Whatever it was, there was nothing to do but wait until it was over.

Things didn't look good for him, to judge by the grim expressions on the doctors and nurses checking up on him. Wendy, bless her heart, had finally been convinced to take their son for some food from the cafeteria, leaving him alone in the room with himself.

"Great, just great," he muttered. He glanced over at the room across the hall, which was occupied by a man in his mid-to-late twenties. Standing anxiously next to him was a very tall man a few years younger – possibly a boyfriend, Bonanno mused, but more likely a brother. Glad for the distraction from his own bizarre predicament, Bonanno moved to their doorway to watch them.

"Sam, I'm fine," the man in the bed said sharply, obviously uncomfortable with the other's solicitousness. "Stop... hovering! It's making me nervous."

'Sam' looked a bit embarrassed. "Sorry," he apologized awkwardly. "It's just my fault that it got you, Dean,-"

"Oh, no, we're _not_ going to talk about our feelings again, Sam. You're my little brother, Sammy. It's my job to protect you. Nothing else to it. Now get out of here before you start _crying_ or something," the injured man said forcefully, but Bonanno could see the deep-seated love between the two brothers.

Sam smiled slightly. "Fine, I'll go. Don't do anything stupid, Dean." As Sam brushed passed Bonanno on his way out of the room, Dean chuckled quietly to himself.

"Oh, you know me, Sammy. Never do anything stupid," the injured man muttered as he lay back in his bed, closing his eyes in obvious weariness.

Bonanno chuckled at the brothers' repartee. Turning back towards his own room, he nearly collided with someone who had come up behind him without his knowledge. Bonanno jumped reflexively, wondering how the man had snuck up on him.

The fellow was an inch or so under six feet, with mussed brown hair, a dark suit, and a trench coat. But most striking were his eyes, staring intensely past Bonanno at the resting figure of the injured man, Dean. The intensity of his gaze was more than a little disconcerting. Especially when he suddenly turned that gaze upon Bonanno.

After so many hours of no one seeing him, it practically made his heart jump out of his chest. (Did he even have a heart at the moment?) Bonanno let out a rather colorful exclamation of surprise.

"You should not take the Lord's name in vain," the other man said in a low, gravelly voice.

About to let off another unbecoming invective, Bonanno instead swallowed it. "Who are you, and why can you see me?" he asked faintly.

The man cocked his head slightly, continuing to stare at him, almost as if he could read his immortal soul. "My name is Castiel," he said finally. "I am an angel of the Lord."

In his rumpled suit, tie, and trench coat, he looked more like an overworked CPA than an angel, but it made as much sense as anything in Bonanno's current situation. "Ah," he replied. "Could you, um, tell me what exactly is going on here? You're the only one who seems to see me..."

The expression on the face of the self-proclaimed angel did not waver. "Your body is near death, so your soul is not tied to it as strongly as it should be. It is likely a reaper will soon arrive to claim you," Castiel replied.

"A reaper?" Bonanno exclaimed in disbelief. "As in, 'the Grim Reaper'?"

"The reapers are not 'grim' about their work, but you are essentially correct," the angel confirmed in a matter-of-fact tone.

A thought occurred to Bonanno. "Hold on, if there's gonna be a reaper-thing comin' for me, why are _you_ here? It's that guy, isn't it?" He gestured with his head towards Dean, who rested obliviously in his room. To Bonanno's surprise, Castiel's expression seemed to soften infinitesimally.

"Dean is... special," the angel said, as if that explained everything. Maybe it did, to him.

"You his guardian angel, then?" asked Bonanno facetiously. "My guardian angel seems to have fallen down on the job." He didn't want to leave yet – there was so much he still needed to do.

Castiel's eyes narrowed slightly. "He is a friend." He spoke the word as if it were somehow foreign, unexpected. "He is attempting to save the world, though many, if not most, of his actions are ill-advised and potentially fatal to himself."

Bonanno chuckled. "I know a guy sorta like that. Some day, I'll have to take him out for a drink. And then arrest him. The man's one of the best criminal masterminds I've ever chased."

"But you do not truly desire to arrest him, because what he does is for the greater good," the angel remarked, as if he could read Bonanno's thoughts. Maybe he could.

"Yeah. So, Dean here. How's he trying to save the world?"

The intense blue eyes flickered back to the resting man. "He is attempting to stop Lilith from opening the seals on Lucifer's prison and starting the Apocalypse."

Well, that pretty much figured into the rest of this whole situation. "Oh, so no pressure, then?"

Castiel appeared momentarily confused. "If she succeeds, then the world will be destroyed in the final confrontation between Lucifer and Michael."

"Isn't that a lot of weight to put on the shoulders of one guy?" It did seem more than a little unfair to Bonanno, placing the fate of the world in the hands of a single person.

"It is a great burden, but there is no one else who can carry it. And he is not alone in his mission," Castiel replied firmly. He was difficult to read, with very little emotional affect or verbal inflection, but Bonanno thought he was getting better at detecting the subtle signs. And to his eyes, the angel seemed to be... guilty about something.

"Huh. You feeling that maybe you could be doing more to help him?" he prodded experimentally.

Castiel turned his intense stare back to Bonanno once again. "I have done all I can to protect Dean and his brother. It is up to them to stop Lilith. But it is... difficult." Yet another brief statement to express so much. Bonanno wasn't sure he understood everything, but it was clear that Castiel bore a heavy burden of his own.

"A lot of nasty stuff out there, huh? And here I have... had... my hands full with all the _normal_ bad guys. The ones that shoot you with bullets, not claw your eyes out in the middle of the night." He shook his head, and his smile held no trace of amusement. "Kinda makes _my_ job seem a bit trivial."

The angel stepped even closer to the policeman – he seemed to have a problem with personal space. "You are a true servant of God, a devout man who places the safety of others before his own. And there _is_ no greater love than to lay down your life for another." He paused, his eyes turning upwards, his ear cocked as if listening to something Bonanno couldn't quite hear. "I must go," Castiel said quietly.

"I'm given to understand that saving the world is a full-time job," Bonanno replied sympathetically. "Good luck with that."

Castiel almost – almost – blinked. "Thank you. And thank you for listening. Rest easy, Patrick Bonanno. The reapers will not be coming for you tonight." Two fingers brushed against Bonanno's forehead.

And a sudden rush of blackness took him.

Not many days after, Patrick Bonanno surprised all his doctors when he awoke from his coma. They couldn't explain his miraculous recovery; Bonanno, though, had the strangest feeling that a guardian angel had helped him out.


End file.
